Apartment needs an overhaul
Not expecting hotel quality kind of cleanliness and service, but this apartment with a “Superhost” and 5 stars reviews was a letdown.
After a long exhausting ride from Hua Hin, we had the first shock upon opening the main door. The seven of us were welcome with a strong pungent urine-like smell, causing some of us to sneeze. We were immediately reminded of a public toilet.
We contacted the owner to come take a look. We appreciate that he had delayed fetching his young son but his comments along the line of: “Oh, I really thought there was urine. Why did you make it sound like such a serious matter? This is so trivial.” were uncalled for.
We had located the source of the smell to be from the center of the pink sofa showed in the profile picture of this apartment. The owner denied that there was any smell of urine, instead attributing it to the “typical damp” smell of Thailand, a country that is more “South”, hotter and more humid than where he came from.
We rebutted that we were from Singapore, a country even more “south” than where he was from, and apartments in Singapore certainly do not smell this bad. He then got defensive and replied us that he had no more apartments to put us up in and that there was nothing else he could do for us.
We explained that we were not there to criticize his apartment, rather, we were concerned about letting our 3 children sleep on the smelly sofa bed.
To be fair to the owner, he did eventually accepted our request to push the sofa bed into the balcony and bringing in an extra mattress. However, in the process of moving, a lizard ran out of the sofa while they were moving it. Imagine if we had slept on it!
The rest of the apartment could be better maintained. The Master bedroom shower stall had one door missing, which meant that water was all over the bathroom. This posed a potential fall risk. The showerhead in the guest bathroom was leaky, about to fall off any time. Instead of proper bathroom mats, both bathrooms had plastic doormats that were non-absorbent.
The kitchen had an unbearable stench that was most likely the result of old kitchen grease and rotting wood. The sealant around the sink was breeding black mold. We did not dare to use the kitchen as some of the glasses were stained, the hand soap container was empty, the dish detergent had run out and had been topped up with water, a cut-up water bottle was used as a sponge holder that had a sponge sitting in goodness-knows-how-old stinky water that reeked, good thing there was another cleaner and somewhat drier sponge we could use that was not soaking in that stale water.
We are not from the local Health authority. However, it is unacceptable for a host to be negligent on the upkeeping of his Airbnb property. The apartment was screaming for an overhaul, or at the very least maintenance and a complete hygiene once-over. In addition, the host should be paying much more attention to his hospitality and not skimping on the necessities the guests will need and providing adequate comfort to them. After all, we did pay SGD$200 per night for this apartment that we spent the first night mopping and cleaning up.
One last word of caution: When we arrived at the condo lobby, there was a giant signage that rental to tourists is illegal. We were told to ignore the authorities, but we were not to be seen waiting in the lobby with our luggage. You may want to check if you are unknowingly breaking the law.